“Above all, I didn’t want to take any more shit…not from anybody.” –Iggy Pop

I credit Nick Tosches with turning me on to the album from whence the above lyrics come: Avenue B.

It kinda sums it up. Paul Kersey. Not to be confused with Jerome Kersey (R.I.P.).

They say “vigilante”… I don’t know. Doesn’t seem quite right. I mean, we all know about Bernhard Goetz. Taxi Driver.

Michael Winner really nailed it as a director here.

But we must face those drones buzzing overhead. “There’s something dishonorable about killing from a distance,” to paraphrase a line from Godard’s Le Petit Soldat. Depends on the distance. Depends on who drew first.

This is, after all, an urban Western.

“In 2010, FOX and the New York Daily News reported that months after the 9/11 attacks, a Pentagon employee invited al-Awlaki to a luncheon in the Secretary’s Office of General Counsel. The US Secretary of the Army had asked for a presentation from a moderate Muslim as part of an outreach effort to ease tensions with Muslim-Americans.” –Wikipedia

This is, of course, in reference to U.S. agent Anwar al-Awlaki who was subsequently reported to have been wasted by a Hellfire missile fired from a Predator drone in Yemen. Another American assassinated in the same attack (both killed without due process, if at all) by the JSOC and CIA was Samir Khan. That is vigilante justice, or (more likely) fake vigilante justice. Sometimes “reality erupts within the spectacle” (to paraphrase Guy Debord from his masterpiece tome Society of the Spectacle). Just like those Hellfire missiles erupted (exploded).

I call al-Awlaki an agent (or asset) because that is my analysis of the facts (what is known). I may be wrong. I am, however, far more certain about the affiliation of Osama bin Laden. The story of his “death” (Operation Neptune Spear) is the stuff of straight-to-DVD schlock which makes Death Wish look like Citizen Kane.

Which brings me to my initial inverted haiku: 7-5-7. Thanks to the wonderful efforts of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, I was easily able to find just what I was looking for in a jiffy. To wit, the original Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were built to withstand (without collapsing) the impact of a Boeing 707 aircraft (each tower) traveling at 600 mph.

Taking into account the different variants of the 707 (especially the popular 707-320C), we are probably talking about (conservatively) a 315,000-pound aircraft (maximum takeoff weight) carrying 21,000 gallons of fuel (fully-loaded).

Compare that to the 767s which crashed into the WTC on 9/11/01. Yes, 767s are bigger…perhaps 25% heavier, but with a similar fuel capacity (24,000 gallons).

Yet at the Pentagon, we encountered a phantom 757. The damage was not consistent with a plane crash, but rather with a missile. Thierry Meyssan makes this exceedingly clear in his book Pentagate (2002). And then there was United 93…an actual 757…most likely shot down, but mysteriously being trailed by a jet from Warren Buffet’s company NetJets (owned by Berkshire Hathaway). Meanwhile, Ann Tatlock (CEO of Fiduciary Trust Co. International) was at Buffett’s charity golf and tennis tournament at Offutt AFB: the command center of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Ms. Tatlock would normally have been in her office at the World Trade Center (!) right where flight 175 crashed into the south tower. Even President Bush decided to drop by Offutt AFB later in the day rather than returning to D.C. Buffett’s guest list might be quite a piece of evidence for reinvestigating 9/11.

And so…Paul Kersey…an architect (like Minoru Yamasaki, whose masterpiece was brought down by controlled demolition…that is to say, bombs, on 9/11)…living in New York City. He’s robbed of his family by some punks (including a young Jeff Goldblum) who must have seen A Clockwork Orange (1971) a few too many times.

I’m not gonna give away the plot (if you don’t already know it). There are some ingenious details and great acting (particularly Bronson and Vincent Gardenia).

We are left with the most frightening wink and smile ever committed to celluloid. Bronson’s “Gotcha!” is the smirk of justice gaining ground.

4 responses to “Death Wish [1974)”

Thank you! I suppose I learned that from Godard. He really had a lot of guts to follow his conscience…even if he didn’t always end up at an enlightened place. It’s been a lifelong process for him. I take great inspiration from that sort of fearlessness to create in a personal style.